


Skin

by duckcrab



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-01
Updated: 2010-08-01
Packaged: 2017-11-20 15:16:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duckcrab/pseuds/duckcrab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Title: Skin<br/>Fandom: Inception<br/>Summary: Ariadne has drawn entire countries on his skin.<br/>Pairing: Ariadne/Arthur<br/>Rating: PG-13 to R  <br/>Notes: <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/3434.html?thread=3783786#t3783786">inception_kink prompt:</a> She inks buildings all over him after each rendevous (She is an architect, after all). I blame all of this on sunshine, Damien Rice, and one brilliant anon. It all came out a little too saccharine, but I hope you still like it. <br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Skin

Ariadne has drawn entire countries on his skin; inch-by-inch, of course, and always incremental, with no continent ever having been discovered during a solitary encounter. But combined? Combined, she has made him into an ambulatory atlas.

The first structure was hastily drawn on the inside of his wrist while waiting for her plane back to Paris: skyscrapers growing up his arm, opposite the direction of his fingers. He watches her while she draws, studies the way her focus creases her brow, how occasionally she will trap the corner of her bottom lip between her teeth.

“Not my best work,” she says, re-capping the pen. Still, she seems pleased with herself.

“Well,” he says, admiring the facades. “We should all draw so poorly.”

She smiles at him, and then a voice comes over the loudspeaker that startles him, and makes her stand up.

“Don’t be a stranger,” she says, leaning down to press her lips against his cheek. Arthur turns at the last second and their lips meet. It is sweet, and dry, and he plays it off as a happy accident even though his heart is pounding and his mouth has gone dry.

 

 

She’s drawing something on his chest, above his heart, and he’s running his fingers through her hair the second time she takes ink to his skin.

“Your new apartment is nice,” he says.

“You’ve only seen the bedroom.”

“I saw the living room—sort of. It seemed nice.”

“Thank you,” she says, and there is this look of pride on her face that makes him smile.

“You’re not really in Paris on business are you, Arthur?”

He laughs and she chides him.

“You’ll smear it,” she complains. He doesn’t care. He tosses the pen across the room, and hauls her on top of him.

“What is it?” he asks, angling his head in an effort to see what she’s drawn on him. “Is that—?”

It is eerily similar to the hotel lobby in which they shared their first kiss.

“It’s nothing,” she says, running her fingers through the wet ink, smearing it until it is unrecognizable. “It wasn’t real.”

Her hand goes between them as she leans down to kiss him.

“This is real,” she says, guiding him into her for a second time that night.

“Real,” he repeats, and for once he doesn’t need the die to reassure him.

 

 

“Marry me,” he says one morning while she’s building an entire city on his back. For months—almost a year—they have played this game of back and forth, spent thousands of dollars to see each other once or twice a month.

Arthur is completely sold on her, over the moon, but she is silent. He starts to roll over but she pushes him back down again.

“No, don’t—just-just stay there,” she says.

“I’ll move to Paris,” he says. They are in New York this time, in his apartment, on his bed, have made love less than an hour earlier, and she seemed so happy. “I’ll move to Timbuktu. I’ll move to any one of the places you’ve drawn on me—”

“Arthur,” she says. It’s not No, but it’s not Yes either.

“Forget it,” he says, waving it off. “Forget I ever said anything.”

“No, Arthur, look at me.”

He doesn’t want to, but he does anyway.

Her palms cup his cheeks, and her lips move like she wants to say a million things if only her mind would sync up with her mouth.

“Give me your hand,” she finally says, and he flippantly presents her with an open palm that tickles as she writes something on it.

He looks at his hand when she is finished with it.

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

Arthur’s sheets will be covered in black ink before the day is through, but he couldn’t care less.  



End file.
